March 13, 2013

Climate Change Derangement Syndrome

I love it -- just ordered it from Amazon -- April 22nd release date. From Peter Foster, writing at Ontario's Financial Post comes this wonderful review:
Deranged science, perverse policy
In his brilliant new book, The Age of Global Warming, British writer Rupert Darwall notes a phenomenon known as �climate change derangement syndrome.� The phenomenon was on prominent display this week when NDP leader Tom Mulcair went to Washington.

It wasn�t just that Mr. Mulcair�s attack on the climate policies of Stephen Harper was diplomatically inappropriate, or that his support for the recent New York Times anti-Keystone XL editorial was fatuous, it was that Mr. Mulcair�s stance made absolutely no sense if he is truly concerned about the welfare of Canadians � or indeed humanity as a whole.

Mr. Mulcair criticized Mr. Harper for pulling out of Kyoto, but is he even aware that the Americans never signed on to Kyoto in the first place? To find out why, Mr. Mulcair badly needs to read Mr. Darwall�s book, which provides a thoroughly researched and lucidly written account of the truly amazing cultural, scientific and political background to the dominant global political issue of our age, at least until the subprime crisis came along.

The book should profoundly embarrass virtually the entire global scientific community, either for actively supporting the political corruption of science, or for standing silently by while it happened � although the consequences of speaking out shouldn�t be underestimated. As Mr. Darwall observes, skeptics �needed to be crushed and dissent de-legitimized. They were stooges of oil companies and fossil fuel interests, free market ideologues, or climate change deniers.�

Nobody foresaw the technocratic danger than emerged with the climate issue better than U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower. Most people are aware of Ike�s warning in 1961 about the military-industrial complex. Less quoted is his observation that �In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.�
A nice excerpt from the book can be found at the Financial Post here. Looking forward to the book. Posted by DaveH at March 13, 2013 8:21 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?